A Surreal Stroll Through Creativity With Peter Van Straten

Peter has steadily been building a reputation for himself in South Africa, which is now spilling out gradually into the rest of the world. Right now, mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Peter works in oils using a very specific glazing technique where he removes as much paint as possible to let the light shine out of his canvasses seeming to reveal deep and mysterious truths.

Many of his canvasses have the peculiar trait of seeming achingly familiar despite depicting unnatural and unlikely scenes. Peter has a way of tapping into a kind of shared, dream-state unconscious that renders even his paradoxical, quizzical work familiar and strangely reassuring in its oddness.

But Peter is more than just a painter. He is also a song-writer, video artists, writer, poet, father and all round good guy. He is a good example of the kind of creative person who seems to be able to wring art out of any medium he lays his hands on.

Despite all this, he is humble, ironic, self-effacing and forward looking at all times. It’s not that he makes up the strange, dreamlike scene he paints. Somewhere, somehow, it’s how he sees the world.